


mélancolie

by weatheredlaw



Series: the little prince [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brother-Sister Relationships, Clones, Crushes, Found Family, Gen, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: It felt, sometimes, like they had been born at the very same moment. Clinging to life, hands clutching. Music playing.or: caboose and his sister are not made from the same stuff, but with the war in chorus over, he needs her now more than ever





	mélancolie

_“It’s just us,” she says, and takes his hand. She has strong ones, like his. Hands for fighting. For holding guns. For putting on armor. “Just us, M.”_

_“Cate, I—”_

_“Shh. It’s okay.” She draws him in, presses her forehead to his. “They’re going to separate us, but I don’t want that to scare you. No matter what happens, you’re my brother. And I’m going to find you.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“It might be a long time, but I’m not leaving you. Not like she did.”_

_He nods. “I understand.”_

_She kisses his forehead. “I love you.” The door to the room opens and rough hands pull them apart. “I love you,” she says again, louder and more insistent. “Michael!”_

_“Cate! Cate—”_

Cate.

Caboose sits up in bed and breathes.

_Cate._

He kicks off the blanket and sheets, quickly wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes. In the bathroom, he retches. His fingers itch for the piano, _his_ piano, downstairs. The war is over, and they are still in Chorus, trying to help make something for this place. Caboose doesn’t really know where he fits in with any of that. He doesn’t _feel_ particularly useful.

Cate made him feel useful. Cate made him feel like could do anything.

 

* * *

 

“Will you take one _big_ breath for me, captain?” Caboose breathes in. Dr. Grey seems pleased. “ _Very_ good,” she says, in that tone which should unsettle, but most often soothes. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good.” She checks something off on her tablet. Dr. Grey knows when Caboose says _fine_ he does not mean _fine._ Dr. Grey knows when Caboose says _fine_ he means _I am very, very, very tired and my leg hurts and I have a headache that won’t go away and I wish I was sleeping better and I’m also hungry right now._

She just... _knows._

“This is to help you sleep. If you want it,” she adds. There’s a little bottle of pills resting on the tray between them. “But we could try a few other things first.”

“What kind of things?”

She sighs. “ _Well._ There’s meditation, of course. It’s what I prescribed Agent Washington and he seems to enjoy it.”

Caboose nods. “Okay.”

“There’s also some exercises you could do before bed. Captain _Simmons_ prefers those. Keeps his mind and body busy just before rest.” Caboose nods again. That _does_ sound a lot like Simmons. Like something he needs. Caboose tugs at his shirt, at the thread coming loose around the hem.

He could tell her that sleeplessness is only a recent thing. He could tell her that, before this, he’d been able to fall asleep on the battlefield. Church used to get so _mad_ about it, and the memory makes him smile.

Dr. Grey rests a hand on his, stilling his now frantic movements. “You’ll pull that apart, captain.”

“I have others,” he says.

She nods. “Well. You let me know what you want to do. In the meantime, I’ll keep these. Should you want them, you know where to find me.” Her voice is _bright_ like the high keys of his piano, like the sharp, sweet sounds of a violin, like —

_“It’s called a duet.”_

_“Duet. From duo. Meaning two.”_

_His mother smiles. “Very good, M.”_

_“I remembered that.”_

_“You did, I’m very proud.” She stretches out a hand and Cate comes to her. “Cate will play with you. You’ll make music together.”_

A flute. Cate’s flute.

“...Captain.”

Caboose comes back. Dr. Grey’s hand tightens on his wrist. “Sorry,” he says.

“That’s alright. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”

 _Yeah_ , he thinks. _You really have no idea._

 

* * *

 

Chorus is a mess. Caboose has certainly seen worse, but he’s definitely seen better.

People give him strange looks — and he realizes that without a helmet he’s really no one. Hardly anyone on this planet has seen his face, so it makes sense that they would watch as he goes, wondering who this tall, broad stranger among them is. He feels like he towers, and what he wants is to shrink.

Back home, he lays on the couch and falls asleep. At some point, someone puts a blanket over him. He doesn’t _feel_ very well. He feels like maybe he could just keep sleeping. It’s a first for him in several days, and it’s all starting to catch up.

When it’s dark, someone comes over and puts a cool hand on the back of his neck.

“Caboose.”

Ah. Tucker.

“Caboose, you okay?”

He nods. “M’tired.”

Tucker’s expression softens. “Yeah, dude, I feel _that._ ” He has stitches over his brow, and they’ll make a scar. Caboose wants to tell him they’ll be scar buddies — he has plenty of his own. The bigger ones are sensitive, and there’s one on his side that _aches_ when the weather changes. He should ask Dr. Grey about that, come to think of it.

It strikes him suddenly that Tucker doesn’t know his secret. That Wash has done a very good job of keeping it. There could have been a mess over the piano, but everyone just sort of...accepted it. Didn’t press the issue. Caboose wants to tell him, now. Caboose wants to open his mouth and let everything tumble out.

But there is a clot in his throat. He can’t work around it. He can’t move an inch. Tucker’s hand leaves him and Caboose almost wants to beg for it back. Doesn’t matter that it’s dumb, _stupid_ Tucker — he wants to be touched, suddenly, by someone who _knows_ him. Someone who would care if he disappeared.

For so long, no one did. And now, so many do.

“You hungry?” Tucker asks, just as Caboose’s stomach makes an _awful_ noise. Tucker laughs. “Take that as a yes. I’ll bring you something from the mess.”

“...Thank you.”

Tucker seems kind of surprised by that, but he nods. “Yeah dude. Whatever you need.”

After he’s gone, Caboose burrows into his blanket and closes his eyes.

Funny thing is, he _believes_ Tucker means that.

He really does.

 

* * *

 

_“We’ll be taking the last two,” someone says. “Please accept our condolences with regards to your husband.”_

_“Just go.”_

_“Would you like to say goodbye—”_

_“No.” His mother’s voice bites. He looks up at her, at the stoney expression of this woman he suddenly feels like he doesn’t know. She doesn’t even look back as she’s escorted from the room, and Cate’s hand is suddenly red hot in his._

_“Don’t cry,” she says. “Don’t you dare cry.”_

 

* * *

 

He took a tumble, and now someone has to reset his shoulder.

Wash is there, for some reason, Caboose has no idea why.

It was a very _long_ fall.

There’s a nurse there, a man almost as tall as Caboose, with wide, strong hands that massage the muscles of his arm. He puts Caboose’s hand on his shoulder and says very calmly, “Just relax, captain.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Caboose somehow manages to say. “Sure.” There’s a vise gripping his chest and Wash isn’t really helping, kind of flitting around like an anxious bird. “Wash,” Caboose bites out. “Can you leave?”

“Are you okay?”

“ _No_ ,” he says. “But you are _bothering_ me.”

Ah, that hurt his feelings. Caboose feels bad about that, he really does, but he doesn’t want Wash to be worrying. He can go do that somewhere else, maybe worry about Grif who got knocked out earlier that afternoon and still hasn’t woken up. One of the new doctors is worried, but Caboose is pretty sure Grif’s just using it as an excuse to avoid work.

Instead of rushing out, though, Wash relaxes. “...I’m sorry,” he says. “I understand. Let me know when you feel better.”

Caboose nods tersely and focuses on the nurse in front of him.

He’s...very handsome.

“Better?” he asks.

“Um, yes.”

The nurse smiles. “You just take it easy, captain.” His name tag says _Jesse._ Caboose focuses on that part. Not the part where nice, warm hands are massaging their way up his arm, moving closer to his shoulder. Not the part where Jesse talks to him easily about his new job here at the hospital, how he was a soldier and he felt so lucky to have seen Caboose and the other captains lead them to victory. How excited he is for their new capital to be built and the fancy new hospital they’ll have.

“You’re going to be staying here for a while, aren’t you?” Jesse asks, just as Caboose’s shoulder pops back into place.

He _groans_ with relief and bows his head between his knees, breathing deep.

Jesse is still _very_ handsome.

 

* * *

 

And it isn’t his _fault_ they keep running into one another. Caboose’s life has kind of just been one big train wreck after another the last several years that he keeps on smiling through. Odds are, it was bound to catch up to him eventually.

The headaches are pretty constant, so Dr. Grey has him come in for a scan. Turns out Jesse is also an MRI tech, funny enough, and Caboose feels _weird_ about him looking at his brain. It’s been through a lot, and lately it’s _very_ distracted.

“Feeling relaxed, captain?”

 _No_ , he wants to say, instead of his very terse, “ _Yes._ ”

“Great.”

The machine starts up and Caboose keeps his eyes closed, wishing he was somewhere else.

There’s nothing really wrong with his brain, they tell him later. Some minor damage here and there, but Dr. Grey wonders if the headaches are from stress, maybe anxiety. Caboose almost says, _I never worry about anything_ but that’s a lie. That’s an incredible lie.

He’s amazed that he’s been so _good_ at lying about it for so _long._

“Are you sleeping better?” Dr. Grey asks, most gently than he thought she was capable of.

“...No.”

She nods. “Well you haven’t told me what you wanted to do about it. I think we should try the meditation. Why don’t you ask Agent Washington if he’ll show you.”

“Okay.”

“And is there...anything else? On your mind?”

 _Sure_ , he wants to say. _Good looking nurses, a sister I can’t forget, a friend who won’t come back, the nagging feeling that I am dumb and useless, my mother walking away and she doesn’t even look back she doesn’t even look back she doesn’t even_ —

“Caboose.”

He opens his eyes. When had he closed them? Dr. Grey hands him a tissue. He’s crying.

_Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry._

“Maybe I—”

“Cate,” he says weakly. “I...I _need_ Cate.”

Dr. Grey sits back. “She’s one of your sisters. One of the girls, isn’t she?” Caboose nods.

“She left with me. She was in the Freelancer project. They took us both and then they took her and then—” He suddenly can’t breathe, and Dr. Grey is talking him through a panic attack and he feels Cate’s hands slipping from his own —

_No matter what happens, you’re my brother._

“Please,” he says. “I need her.”

_And I’m going to find you._

“Okay.” Dr. Grey reaches out and holds him. It feels nice. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Wash says, but Caboose feels like he should.

It’s time to let his secret go, to open his mouth and let it all out.

“Is this about that nurse?” Donut asks.

Tucker lifts his head. “Uh, _what_ nurse? If you’re telling me Caboose scored with one of them before I did—”

“Jesse,” Donut explains. “The one who reset his shoulder.”

Caboose puts his face in his hands while the conversation erupts around him.

“Lot tougher than you thought, huh?” Wash asks, and puts a kind hand on Caboose’s shoulder.

 

* * *

 

In the end, they understand.

“Not the weirdest thing I know about you,” Tucker says, and Caboose feels a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

He sleeps better, that night.

 

* * *

 

Caboose goes back to Dr. Grey to tell her he’s working on meditating, and he’s starting to feel a little better. “Less headaches.”

“That’s good!” She moves around him in the exam room and grabs her tablet. “I found Cate.”

Caboose’s heart skips a beat. “...Where?”

“She’s on another colony, working. I can’t get the details of how she got away from the Project, but she used to go by the call sign of Agent California.”

Caboose breathes. He breathes and he breathes and he collapses in on himself and _shakes_ his own bones apart while Dr. Grey holds him steady.

“She’s alive,” he croaks.

“Yes. She’s _alive._ ”

For some reason this astounds him. He had been so sure she was gone, so sure they were _all_ gone. And he was alone. Alone with his secret history, alone with memories of music and the moon. His fingers itch to play.

He goes home and sits at the piano and the music comes to him, it comes straight from deep inside, a piece he knows intimately, knows despite his misgivings and his hurt.

She taught him so much, and then she turned and she left.

She had always called him _M._ Never Michael.

She had always called him _M_ , but she had called him hers.

Her son.

_Would you like to say goodbye?_

This piece is called _Mélancolie_ , he remembers.

_No._

They played this together.

Caboose wasn’t born, he was created, he was made and built by her hand. Did she walk away because he looked too much like his father? They’d grown up to be so different, different bodies and voice and even, if he thought about it, different faces. The same bones, same genes, same _everything_ , down to the molecule, but still. Different.

Different lives.

Did she leave him because her heart was breaking? Did she walk away from them both because their home was empty now? Her husband dead, her creations picked at like puppies from a litter.

Caboose plays because _he_ is heartbroken, because his home, the home he had, is empty.

But he plays because he is happy, still. Because he has a new home and it is full.

He plays because Cate is _alive._

And he’s going to see her soon.

 

* * *

 

There were seventeen of them. Each of them had a name. Caboose can remember them all. Some of them played instruments, some of them were fighters. Some were artists or singers or dancers. It had been a requirement of the project, that they each have a talent. Caboose could build, and he could play piano. He and Cate were both fighters, they sparred with the Saratoga triplets. He and Cate did a lot together. His father jokingly called them twins, but it did sometimes feel that way.

It felt, sometimes, like they had been born at the very same moment. Clinging to life, hands clutching.

Music playing.

Dr. Grey says Cate wants to see him, that she is coming to Chorus and she’ll be here in three days, and Caboose feels that gentle thrum of anxiety start up again and immediately stops sleeping.

“Okay,” Wash says, catching him in the kitchen on his fourth cup of coffee. “It can’t be like this.” And he takes him onto the balcony and shows him some meditation steps. That afternoon, Caboose falls asleep on the sofa and doesn’t wake up until the next morning.

Donut is shaking him. “ _Caboose._ You’ve gotta get up. She’s here. Dr. Grey called and she’s _here._ ”

Caboose sits up. “What?”

“She’s on her way, she’s here!” All week everyone has been freaking out, not sure what to expect from Cate. Wash and Carolina both admit she was separate from them, that they had only heard of Agent California in passing, and only knew that she had, eventually, vanished. That had been her job, Carolina explained, but one day she was gone and that was. It. No one ever heard from her again.

“She was kind of a legend,” she’d said, and reached over to cup his cheek. “Makes sense that you and her were made from the same stuff.”

Caboose had wanted to say they most certainly _weren’t_ , but after he thought about that, after he sat with that a minute, he understood what she meant.

Like how she and Wash were made from the same stuff.

How she and Church had been made from the same stuff.

Forged from the same fires, cut from the same log — those kind of feelings.

Feelings he is suddenly unsure about having, as he starts pacing. She’s on her way, she’s here, she’s walking this way, and what he wouldn’t give to be able to see that.

 _A legend_ , Carolina had called her.

His sister.

A legend.

Someone is knocking on the door.

Wash nudges him. “Should you get that?”

Caboose feels frozen. “I...I don’t know.”

More knocking. Grif says something and Simmons steps on his foot. Words aren’t really registering. Nothing really registers until Tucker says, “I’ll get it,” and goes to the door.

There’s nothing keeping him from flying off the entire planet, Caboose realizes. There is nothing keeping him grounded and there is nothing he can hide behind.

Why is he afraid of her?

_Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry._

He wasn’t born he was made.

They were not born, but they may as well have been, at the very same moment, under the very same stars, on the very same moon. Dust in their breath and their bones she is a _part_ of him and so when he sees her face for the first time in years he is suddenly fifteen and clutching her hand while they stand on stage, their performance inadequate while they are judged by the red red sargeant and his blue blue wife.

She stands away from him. There is grey at her temples, same as his. A scar on her cheek and a finger missing from her left hand.

Once, they were both whole.

_No matter what happens, you’re my brother._

Caboose chokes. “Cate—”

_And I’m going to find you._

She smiles. “Hey, you.”

 

* * *

 

They were not born, they were made.

But they were made together, and even though the smaller things they were made of are not the same — it doesn’t matter.

He holds her and she holds him back, and they both cry. They cling to one another and it is better than it ever was. His sister, here and in his arms, saying his name and brushing the tears from his cheeks. They are very suddenly alone and Caboose pulls her to the couch because he wants to hear _everything._

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Are you alright?”

“Yes. Yes I’m fine.” She holds his face in her hands. “Are you?”

Oh, what a _question._ Is he fine?

He has fought more than one war. He has bled and he has bled others. He’s lost friends and a best friend. He’s lost it all and got it all back, over and over again. He has made himself and remade himself and lost little parts of himself along the way. He has family, when he thought he’d never know what that felt like again. He has a _home_ and it’s full. He has music back, now, and he has _hope_ for the very first time in such a long while. There’s a handsome nurse who always smiles back and a wild, wild doctor who hugs him like he matters.

Caboose nods, and knows that, for her, he doesn’t have to unfold all that right now. He can take it slow, take it easy, until the moment is right. “Yeah,” he says. “I am now.”


End file.
